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from the could-get-interesting-on-Halloween dept.
A police officer is directing traffic in the intersection when he sees a self-driving car barreling toward him and the occupant looking down at his smartphone. The officer gestures for the car to stop, and the self-driving vehicle rolls to a halt behind the crosswalk. "This seems like a pretty plausible interaction. Human drivers are required to pull over when a police officer gestures for them to do so. It’s reasonable to expect that self-driving cars would do the same." But Will Oremus writes that while it's clear that police officers should have some power over the movements of self-driving cars, "what’s less clear is where to draw the line." Should an officer be able to "do the same if he suspects the passenger of a crime? And what if the passenger doesn’t want the car to stop—can she override the command, or does the police officer have ultimate control?"
According to a RAND Corp. report on the future of technology and law enforcement “the dark side to all of the emerging access and interconnectivity is the risk to the public’s civil rights, privacy rights, and security.” It added, “One can readily imagine abuses that might occur if, for example, capabilities to control automated vehicles and the disclosure of detailed personal information about their occupants were not tightly controlled and secured.”
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday August 27 2015, @12:40AM
Remote stop = remote hack.
Use laser light to convey a message into a black box. The black box decodes the message, checks the signature on the police order, and issues a simple request to the driving computer(s) to pull over (as one of several possible actions; other could be "drive slowly", etc.) Sometimes the "follow me" order is important when pilot/flag cars are present. I have been in several road construction zones with those cars - and you have to be somewhat sentient to figure out what the worker with the sign is trying to tell you. You may not just proceed. Will a robot car be smart enough on its own to stop, wait for a vehicle with a sign "Follow me", and then follow it? Guidance messages could be handy.
Laser, or 60 GHz, would be safe because the medium is short-range by definition. Nobody from China will be able to "hack" a car in LA - you have to be within 100 yards, for example. Second, the only action of such a hack would be for the car to pull over and report to the police (and to the owner) that it had been stopped.
Airliners are all automated for many years now; there was exactly one major hijacking since 9/11 - and who did it? Not the computer - it was the pilot.